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"Sleep Fighter" is the thirty-fifth episode of Regular Show's fourth season (and one hundred-fourteenth episode overall). It first aired on July 29, 2013.
Synopsis[]
The guys must help Muscle Man stop fighting in his sleep.
Plot[]
The episode begins with Mordecai and Rigby sleeping. Mordecai asks for more coffee from Margaret, while Rigby says he's the pizza king. Suddenly, Muscle Man enters and starts attacking Mordecai, which wakes up Rigby. Muscle Man proceeds to punch Rigby, but Mordecai intervenes and holds back Muscle Man's arms. However, Muscle Man head-butts Mordecai, kicks Rigby to the ground, and punches Mordecai in the stomach. The scene then cuts to the next morning, and we see that everyone looks beaten up and confronts Muscle Man outside the house. Muscle Man claims he doesn't know what happened and that he didn't mean to hurt anyone. Later on, Muscle Man shows up at Benson's apartment and punches him. The next day, Benson agrees that Muscle Man's sleep fighting has become a park problem. Thomas has lost a tooth, and Rigby won't sleep unless they barricade their bedroom door. Muscle Man doesn't know what's wrong with him and worries that he might be a sleep fighting freak for the rest of his life. The team reassures him that they won't give up until he's cured.
The scene changes to Muscle Man tied up in a bed and video cameras all around him with his walkie-talkie on the nightstand. Benson explains the plan to Muscle Man: they will watch him sleep and if he goes after them Rigby, now wearing an old police dog suit to protect him, will hold him off. Benson plays a soothing tune on the walkie-talkie that causes Muscle Man to quickly fall asleep. The rest of the park workers are seen monitoring the video camera screens in shifts. Later, Thomas wakes them up to show them that Muscle Man has begun dreaming. They see him thrashing and straining against the ropes and making threats and soon tearing free of the ropes before destroying the cameras in his sleep. Soon the cameras show the park workers staring at the screen and they are confused for a short amount of time only to realize Muscle Man is walking toward their van with cameras strapped to his shoulders. Rigby begs Mordecai not to make him face Muscle Man but Mordecai tosses him out and they close the van. The park workers wince and look away as Rigby gets beaten mercilessly by Muscle Man, yelling "The suit's not working!", with Mordecai quietly apologizing for making Rigby go through this.
The scene changes to the next day and a beaten up Rigby is holding an ice pack to his head. Rigby scolds everybody for being "great spectators," as none of them decided to help him when he was getting beaten. They are thinking of a plan B when Muscle Man comes in holding two suitcases and telling the park workers that he plans to move far away to prevent himself from hurting them. But before he could carry out this plan Hi-Five Ghost comes in informs everyone of something he found. After showing a video of an ostrich kicking a ball at a person (the ball just rolls in between his feet harmlessly but then running up to the person and kicking him in a sensitive area) Hi-Five Ghost discards the video, claiming it not to be the right footage he spoke of, and shows them the view the cameras got when Muscle Man started dreaming. As Hi-Five Ghost rewinds the clip, strange, humanoid shapes appear in the static. Skips initially dismisses it as a technical glitch, but Benson gets Fives to zoom in, revealing strange purple creatures in Muscle Man's sweat.
Seeing this, Skips deduces that the camera must have picked up remnants of Muscle Man's dream while Benson asks if he recognizes the creatures.
Muscle Man then recalls how he saw the creatures. He remembers babysitting Starla's niece and sitting on the couch and when Starla left, she told him to watch over the baby and he turns on the TV. The TV shows a creepy kids show with the same purple creatures called the "Huggstables" offering to hug a criminal. Muscle Man changes the channel to the world's gnarliest crash pits but it causes the baby to start crying so he switches the channel back to the Huggstable show. The Huggstables have surrounded the criminal and then hug him tightly, causing him to explode in a multitude of sparkles to which the Huggstables remark how pretty his sparkling remains are. Then they point to a terrified looking troll and rush over to hug him to which he also explodes into sparkles, which the baby would laugh at. Muscle Man explains that he tried to turn off the show, but every time he did, the baby would start crying again, and what made it worse was that the show played all 8 seasons with 257 episodes back to back. As a result, Muscle Man was traumatized to the point that he was crying while curled up in a ball on the floor by the time Starla and her sister had found him the next day.
Using this knowledge, the rest of the gang deduces that Muscle Man's nightmares are being caused by his memories of the show. This time Skips has an idea, asking Pops if he still had that dream catcher Skips gave him since Pops started having nightmares about talking dogs. Later that night, they tie Muscle Man to the stair banister and Skips instructs that when he begins to dream they will tilt the dream catcher toward him to make the nightmares come out. In Muscle Man's dream, he is in a colorful play area and swarms of Huggstables offer to give him a hug, surrounding and burying him in hugs. Back in the real world, Muscle Man starts to struggle against his restraints, and the park workers aim the dream catcher at him. The dream catcher then shoots out a pink light that sucks out the Huggstables. However, the dream catcher quickly fills due to an underestimated quantity of Huggstables, with the cause being revealed to be the eight seasons' worth of the Huggstables show Muscle Man had to watch with Starla's niece. Seconds later, the dream catcher breaks from the overload and the remaining Huggstables, now having emerged into the real world, begin attacking all the park workers.
A fight breaks out between the Huggstables and the park workers. During the fight, Skips fetches a gym bag full of various dream catcher weapons (harpoon gun, bow, slingshot, mirror, pistol, etc.) and the park workers begin to quickly suck back up the dream monsters. When they are all gone, a giant Huggstable comes out and offers to give them a hug. Skips and the rest of the park workers run off to get Skip's van to suck the giant dream monster into a larger dream catcher. Seeing the skateboard ramp again, Benson calls out everybody for not putting it away like he told them. But Skips responds that he's going to be glad that they didn't, as he uses the ramp to jump into the air. It is revealed that underneath the van is a giant dream catcher, which they use to catch the giant Huggstabble. After catching the last Huggstabble, the van crashes into the house, leaving a giant hole in the wall.
Muscle Man finally wakes up and says he had the strangest dream that everyone (except Thomas) was in it. Benson suggests they all get some sleep. Pops then wants a group hug in celebration but Mordecai declines the offer.
Characters[]
- Muscle Man
- Mordecai
- Rigby
- Hi-Five Ghost
- Benson
- Skips
- Thomas
- Pops
- Huggstable Leader
- Huggstables
- Starla
- Peggy
- Starla's Niece
Locations[]
- Park
- Starla's House
- Benson's Apartment
Video[]
Trivia[]
- Skips has a duffel bag full of weapons designed as dream catchers.
- Pops has recurring nightmares about talking dogs.
- Starla has both a sister and a baby niece.
Episode Connections[]
- At the beginning Rigby dreams of being the Pizza King.[1]
- The viral video Hi-Five Ghost showed was of that Ostrich thing with the balls who previously appeared in season one.[2]
- Skips use of dream catchers is brought up again.[3]
Pop Cultural References[]
- The episodes title was a reference to the popular video game Street Fighter, as well as sleep walking.
- The Huggstables are a parody of the children's television series, The Teletubbies.
- The method that The Huggstables use to eradicate crime in their TV series is a reference to The Care Bears TV series, which chronicled the adventures of several living stuffed bears who’d blast the evil out of their enemies with a “care bear stare.”
- Muscle Man mentioned "eight seasons, 257 episodes back-to-back" which alluded to the amount of seasons and similar amount of episodes this show produced (total episodes came to 261).
Production Notes[]
- The plot for this episode was inspired by a fan. In 2012, J.G. Quintel received a Facebook message from a fan of Regular Show with an idea for an episode plot involving Pops buying himself a dream catcher to aid a nightmare problem.
- This idea first manifested as an Easter egg in the episode "Country Club," as a dream catcher was the item that was stolen from Skips.
- The plot of the Season 8 Episode "The Dream Warrior" was also inspired by this idea.
Goofs[]
- When Muscle Man is tied to his bed, he has ropes holding down his chest and legs. But when he starts dreaming, the rope holding down his legs is gone.
- When Muscle Man tosses the camera after saying "I'm gonna turn your face into a meatball pizza!," his eyes are briefly shown to be open, even though he's dreaming.
- There were three errors in both camera views:
- First camera had the park background. Second camera had the bedroom wall.
- First camera had one of Muscle Man's eyes closed. Second camera had both of Muscle Man's eyes closed.
- First camera had a normal position. Second camera was at a slightly different position.
- When Starla asked if Muscle Man will be okay taking care of her sister's baby, she's not wearing any lipstick. When Muscle Man replies that he can handle it, Starla has her lipstick back.
- Muscle Man's position on the stair banister changes multiple times during the fight between the park workers and the Huggstables.
- Benson disappears in the last scene when Mordecai says, "No thanks, Pops".
Alternate Versions[]
UK[]
- The ostrich kicking the man in the crotch was changed to the ostrich flapping its wings.
Official Releases[]
- On iTunes and Amazon Prime, the episode was paired with "Last Meal" under "Volume Six". It was released digitally on July 29, 2013 for the price of $2.99 in HD, or $1.99 in SD.
- This episode is available as part of the following DVD sets: